


Hilda Shelters in Place

by ellen_fremedon



Category: Hilda the Plus-Size Pin-up Series - Duane Bryers
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, Pandemics, Recipes, Yuletide, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28096077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/pseuds/ellen_fremedon
Summary: Welcome toOff the Grid atChezHilda, updated every Friday or whenever I feel like it. My artwork is at the Patreon link, and I don't need to remind lovely folks like you to like and subscribe, now do I?
Comments: 64
Kudos: 105
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Hilda Shelters in Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Topaz_Eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/gifts).



> Many thanks to Sanj for beta!

Hi, folks! Hilda here. Big news, and I do mean big—I said last week I said if we got 25 new subscribers by Friday I would buy that sousaphone, and, welp. Looks like there are a _lot_ of sousaphone fans out there! Or at least 34 of you, which is a lot in these parts. So, I only just got back from town—have not even taken off my bra, that’s how excited I am—and check. This. Baby. Out! 

Just gorgeous. You would hardly believe she’d been sitting in a pawn shop for two years, would you? She just needs a little TLC—that’s part of why this episode is probably going to go up late; I needed to stop at the music store for valve oil and brass polish. I’ll turn those labels so you can see them, but it’s mostly just mineral oil. And I thought I was going to have to buy a new mouthpiece, but I found mine from high school. In the root cellar, don’t ask me why. Oof, you can tell this hasn’t been played for a while—let’s get some oil in there.

At any rate. The other reason this is going to be late is because I’ve decided this should probably be my last trip to town for a while. There’s only been half a dozen cases of the coronavirus in the state, but two of them are in the next county, and one of those went to a church choir festival last week, so. Yeah. There were a lot of people at the grocery store. And the drug store. And the feed store. But I have everything I need to hunker down _chez_ Hilda for a good long while—including a new, used sousaphone and no close neighbors. 

Oh hey! You hear that? No you don’t because, there is not a rattle to be heard. I think we’re ready to give this baby a try. Now, I should warn you that, unlike this lovely instrument, I am _very_ rusty. Someone out there is about to comment that brass is non-ferrous, I just know. Do yourself a favor, put the keyboard away, and let’s see just how much Vaughan Williams I still have memorized, okay? Here we go. Deep breath. 

***

Hi, folks! Hilda here. I have had so many requests for baking demos this week and. People. I have been telling you for ages, starting a sourdough culture is not hard, _and_ you can make waffles every day if you want them. But I realized, I’ve demonstrated some of my favorite recipes, but I have never properly introduced y’all to Bob. Bob is my starter. He started out as a scoop of my friend’s starter; her name is Ermintrude. The starter, not the friend. I’m not sure why Bob is a he and Ermintrude is a she, but I don’t judge. Now, I just took Bob out of the fridge, and we’re going to feed him. You see how sleepy he looks? Yeah, we need to perk him up.

Bob is at 100% hydration; we’re going to give him equal amounts of flour and water. Now, I used to do this by volume, which actually gets you to 95% hydration, but we transitioned a while ago to doing this by weight. Lemme turn the scale around there so you can see. Today Bob is just getting a snack and going back in the fridge. Fifty grams of water, and—oops, let me scoop some of that back—fifty of flour. And now we’re going to pour off 100 grams, so he doesn’t outgrow his little jar. There we go.

Bob gets a little snack about every other day, and I find that on that schedule I can bake when I want to. When I still worked in the city and had a less flexible schedule, I baked once a week, and I got Bob out and woke him up two days in advance. But there’ve been times I haven’t been baking and Bob has just chilled in the fridge for a couple of months. And it was fine. I actually discarded the discard, for about a week of daily feedings, and he was back to his old bubbly self. If it doesn’t smell perfectly appetizing—like you want to put it right in your mouth—throw your discard out, don’t cook with it, and keep feeding and discarding until it does.

But this has the nicest, yeast-and-vinegar sourdough smell. I wish I could upload it for you somehow. Which means this discard is for _waffles_.

Now, there are some lovely yeast-raised waffles out there that take a couple hours to work—one of these days, I need to make you some _gaufres de Liège_ —and some lovely all-sour ones that take overnight. But I would like waffles Now, so we’re going to make a hybrid recipe. We’re going to use this bit of Bob for flavor, but the leaven is going to come from baking powder. It’s going to taste real good and take about ten minutes and half of that is for heating the waffle iron. All right, here’s where I stop talking and edit in the recipe card. 

  * 1 cup all-purpose flour
  * 1 tsp baking powder
  * 1/4 tsp baking soda
  * 1/4 cinnamon. Or more--you know how much cinnamon you like. 
  * 1/4 tsp salt
  * 1 Tbsp sugar. White or brown; if you use brown, mix it with the milk and oil instead of the dry ingredients.
  * 1/3 cup sourdough discard
  * 3/4 cup milk. Any kind--dairy, nut milk, whatever you’ve got. 
  * 2 Tbsp oil or melted butter. A neutral oil like canola, or coconut if you like the flavor.
  * 1/4 tsp vanilla extract if you like 



Right, did you all get that? Mix up the dry ingredients, then whisk in the wet ones. And that’s it! Should be nice and smooth. Now, you can use this right away--and I’m going to--but it just gets tastier the longer it sets. You can make these vegan if you want, just use a non-dairy milk. Set your waffle iron to maybe 4 out of 5--they brown right up, so you don’t need to make them super crisp. This batter keeps in the fridge for a couple days, allegedly. I’ve never managed to test it. 

***

Hi, folks! Hilda here. Welcome to all the new subscribers! I wasn’t expecting that sousaphone segment to go viral, but apparently Buzzfeed called me “the patron saint of pantslessness.” Y'all, I am so glad you are finally understanding what I have known for years: Pants are a prison, and _chez_ Hilda is an anti-carceral household. At any rate, glad to see you here!

A surprising number of new subscribers said they wished they could have a sousaphone of their own, and I wish you could too, y’all, it’s a wonderful instrument. But I bet a lot of you have a guitar at home that you’ve never actually learned to play. Right? Well, today is your day to haul it out of the closet and replace that broken string, because today I am going to teach you three chords.

After that you’re on your own. But three chords will get you through a long, long quarantine.

***

Hi, folks! Hilda here. This is just going to be a short bonus episode—our regular update is still coming on Friday, and that’s going to be another sewing demo. It’s masks again—I know, I know, but we all need to keep wearing them—and I learned a new trick for pleating. Spoiler—you’re going to need a fork. Just your regular table fork. Fancy equipment, I know. 

But before I cut out the masks, I wanted to show you all the fabric I’m using. This is something I’ve been holding onto for a while, trying to find a good use for it. This is vintage flour sacking. 

A lot of you have been asking for fabric recommendations for masks, and I always say quilting cotton, because it’s fine and tightly woven. Flour sacking, though, if you can get it and it’s in good shape, is some of the tightest, smoothest cotton fabric you’ll ever see. I mean, it had to be--you try to pour flour into burlap, well, that’s not a sack, that’s a sieve. But because it was so strong, Depression housewives kept the bags and made them into dish towels and aprons and even dresses--and so the flour companies started making them in these nice prints. We’ve got some florals, here’s a stripe--they’d shake up the look every now and then, so if you wanted to make a whole dress in one print you had to keep buying the same brand. Some mills even printed pattern pieces right on the sacking. 

This is about twelve sacks’ worth, here. Someone went to the trouble of picking out the side seams and ironing the material, and then they just...never cut it out. I always wondered what happened to her, the lady that put this aside. What she was saving it for. 

Look at me, getting sniffly over old flour sacks. Okay. I just wanted to show this to you. Little bit of history. See y’all on Friday.

***

Hi folks! Hilda here. So I’m outside with the hens, as you can see. Just moved the henhouse to a new spot. Don’t they have a nice view? And new grass they haven’t picked all the bugs out of yet. 

Viewer Kurt W. asked if the lockdown has made it hard for me to sell eggs. I guess I can see, from the size of this flock, how you might make that assumption, Kurt. But I usually don’t have enough extra to bother selling, and it’s not because I eat that many eggs. It’s because most of these ladies are retired. 

Yep. I assumed I’d get stewing hens when their laying careers were over, but, welp. We’ve been through a lot together. And I’ve got the space for them to be mainly free-range anyway, so keeping them as pets doesn’t cost me that much in feed. So they hang out. 

I know you’re saying, But Hilda, last week you showed us how to joint a whole chicken for frying. Fryers. Are. Different. One, they’re very young; two, I don’t name them; and three—they are _bastards._ By the time they’re a good eating weight, I have put so much time, sweat, and hardware into keeping them from killing themselves that it’s honestly a relief to stop trying and grant them the end they so clearly desire. 

But my lady friends here are far too dignified for such shenanigans, and that is why I love them. You want to say hi to the internet, Thorgunna? No? No. Thorgunna is shy. Okay. 

***

Hi, folks! Hilda here, and oh my gosh, you lovely people. My beautiful subscribers sent me a GoPro. The note just says “for your convenience in chicken-wrangling,” and I promise there will be lots more chicken content, but for a gift of this magnitude I cannot express my gratitude properly in any currency but kittens. That’s just a law of the internet.

But fortunately, it is kitten season here at _chez_ Hilda! So we’re going to inaugurate this GoPro with a trip out to the back pasture for a special treat. 

And we’re back. You can see I have outfitted myself with this blacksmith’s apron and these gloves. I’ve been slowly TNR’ing the feral cats that live in the old silo out here—that’s Trap, Neuter, Release--but there’s at least two queens I haven’t been able to trap yet and of course they’ve both had kittens. I’m still trying to TNR the mamas, but right now I need to catch the kittens while they’re young enough to tame. Even if we can’t adopt them out, the more they get to like people, the easier a time we’ll have getting them vet care when they need it. But so many people have been adopting pets in lockdown that the county shelter was actually empty last week—completely empty, for the first time ever. So if we can catch these little fuzzballs I think we can guarantee them nice indoor homes. 

Gonna be weird taking them to the vet, though. They’ve got a contactless drop-off system going in the parking lot, but I haven’t actually been to town since March. I don’t even know where any of my bras have gotten to.

But you know, the vet can deal. She’s seen some nipples in her time. 

Okay. You see there in front of the silo? Let’s try the zoom function—ooh. There we go. Gosh, so tiny. We’re just going to sit down here very quietly and become part of the landscape. Very quiet. Veeeeery quiet. Okay. 

***

Hi, folks. Hilda here.

Folks, I just got back from town. I dropped off the kittens for their spay and neuter appointment. The vet found a home for Johann and Ziggy—they’re going to stay together—so none of them will be coming back here. That’s a good thing. That’s not why I’m—well, I’m not sad, not really.

I am angry, y’all. It all comes out as tears, but I am so angry.

I have not seen another human being in the flesh for six months. I’ve waved to the mailman, but he doesn’t have time to chat these days. It’s just me here at _chez_ Hilda. Me and the cats, and the hens, and the squirrels, and, and Bob.

And you, of course. All you lovely folks in my inbox and my comments and up in my Zoom. But if I don’t post for a week, if I don’t answer my emails, you’re not here.

No one’s here.

I’m out here, all alone, sheltering in place, because that is how I can do my part. I’m not a doctor, I’m not an epidemiologist, I don’t have any way to take care of the people who are suffering and dying except staying out of the way. By not being a vector. By refusing to be the instrument of my neighbors’ destruction.

I had to drive all the way through town to get to the vet, and, y’all. For every person I saw wearing a mask correctly, I saw twenty wearing it under their nose, or around their neck, or _nowhere_ in sight. People were out shopping, indoors, without a mask. People were eating in _restaurants_. People I know. People I thought of as kind and considerate neighbors.

Now I understand that some people have to keep working because their jobs are essential, and that is unavoidable. And that some people have to keep working because they cannot afford to miss a paycheck, and that is unconscionable, but I cannot fix that on my own. But for so many people to refuse to take even the most basic precaution they can—

I just. I have missed seeing some of those folks so much, but I told myself I was doing the most I could for them. And they don’t care whether I live or die.

So. I know I said this was going to be a music post but I just don’t have the heart today, folks. I’m sorry. Wear your goddamn masks.

***

Hi, folks! Hilda here. I know I haven't come through with all the bonus content I promised. I'm not going to apologize for that; it is how it is. And I've been taking more time to check in on you lovely folks. I've subscribed to some new channels and backed some Kickstarters and caught up on some podcasts, and it's done me a world of good. I can just feel those creative juices starting to flow again, every time one of you lovely people finds the time and the grace to reach out to strangers and teach them what you know. And you know so much, every one of you. Yes, you too. This is just peppermint tea and half cold at that, but I do in fact love everyone in this bar. Cheers, Internet. So. This was going to be this month's Patreon bonus, but patrons, you're going to have to bear with me a little longer, because I’m honestly so proud of it I want everyone to hear. It’s pre-recorded and edited, except for this introduction. I've got the fourth movement of Schubert’s Trout quintet for you, with yours truly playing all five parts.

But Hilda, you are no doubt saying, the Trout quintet is scored for violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano; and the piano is the only one of those you own. Though, I hear you continuing to say, you have inexplicably got a violin bow for some reason.

You are correct. I do not have any bowed strings nor could I play them if I did. But I do have a piano, a sousaphone, a guitar, a clarinet, and...

A _musical saw!_ This is what the bow’s for! I’ve been saving this for a surprise, though I can promise a lot more musical saw content after today. Seriously, so much more.

This is a big thank you to all of you who’ve been alone together with me this year. I am more grateful for you all than I can say. I’m so glad you’re out there, in your own bubbles. Please keep yourselves safe, y’all. I want to hug you someday. And I hope you have as much fun listening to this as I did putting it together.

But if you didn’t? Don’t care. _I_ had a blast. Take it away, Hildas!


End file.
